Ok, predicting weather is chaotic, but we totally know, within hundredths of a degree, what “average global temperature” was a thousand years ago and what it will be in a century. It’s The Science! ™
I get your point, and even largely agree with it. But there’s nothing at all contradictory about those two statements as such. We are completely unable to predict whether a given atom of fissile material will decay in a year, but we can predict to a very high accuracy how many of them in a ton will.
Forecasters have an incentive to err on the side of predicting doom. People don’t complain nearly as much about a predicted storm that fizzles as they would about a bad storm that blindsides them.
But—I was able to get a good price on a new generator after this last hurricane season. After another dire forecast, we got zero hurricanes hitting the mainland, and the stores were dumping their stock by late fall.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. I've not been caught out- yet. The day is young, and big snowstorm starting here in central VT. I have my Bobcat if we have to dig out.
Glen, you wouldn't have seen me there.... because after the 2021 TX deepfreeze, I bought a generator and got my house wired up to support it. A lot of people will get stuff like that.... and then they have it.
I have the same Generac generator. I had it installed because we were taking care of a 92 yr old mother in law with an O2 machine and other plug in medical equipment.That meant moving her during a blackout would be near impossible.
We had periodic blackouts even though we live minutes from the 5th largest city in the US. It's an old suburb with lots of old trees that battle with electric lines whenever the weather gets even moderately bad. The situation has improved somewhat because the electric company has been replacing all the poles and gas lines around here for the last 2 years. Just when you think they're done another trench and detour appear. But its all good. The pole work should make our service more reliable.
The generator and the electrician who installed it have been good to us. I wound up using the electrician father and son crew to rewire the old half of my house. It's all about trust.
They do the yearly maintenance. When I checked the oil level the other day it was full and clear.
In July we had a 36 hour power outage. My neighbor had just come from grocery shopping and had a lot of refrigerated stuff that would have gone bad; but we had her put it all in my mother laws refrigerator that we sadly no longer use after she died last year.
I ran an extension cord to my other neighbor's house on the other side of me 40 ft away to keep his refrigerator on. The generator had no problem running my two AC units and 3 refrigerators. The only negative thing I experienced was guilt.
It is noisy but I guess there's nothing they can do about that. I do wonder why they can silence the car in my driveway near perfectly but the generator sounds like the equipment they use to dig up my street. The company that puts a better muffler on one of these will take over the market.
The opposite is no fun either. The power went out here during Ian. My husband keeps up with the generator and had it checked again in addition to normal maintenance in advance of the storm. So, the generator kicks on, immediately goes out, and we get to sit in the dark in our cozy little court listening to all the neighbor's generators rumbling away. The gas range along with an electric igniter came in handy.
I just came back in from clearing off our cars and the driveway. I'm in the Cincinnati, OH area--not the City of Cincinnati itself, it's only 20% of the land area of Hamilton County. I'm in one of the suburban townships north of the City. But we've had 8-10" of snow so far. It should be over soon. Tomorrow will be a high of 8 degrees--I wanted to do most of the digging out today, because it will be so much colder tomorrow. At least I'm retired, and don't have to go anywhere today or tomorrow. I'm just hoping we don't get any more of that -25 stuff we had here in the late '70s and early '80s. I lived through the Blizzard of '78, where in Cincinnati we got 1/4" of ice, then nearly a foot of snow, and then the temp dropped to -25. The region was shut down for 3 days. But I was in my late 20s then--I'm going to hit 76 next month. So it's a bit harder.
I am no fan of Mandami, but I saw an interesting exchange on X, who apparently monogamy tweeted out that residents should be aware they were in for 3 to 16 inches of snow. One comment was along the lines of sarcastic thanks for that information. I'm sorry to say my initial reaction was to consider piling on, until I realized that the estimates were probably about as good as the science would justify. Too many politicians have engaged in "hurricane hype" so I want to praise Mandami for not following that path. I doubt I'll often get a chance to praise him so let me not pass up this chance.
I am reminded of the inverse four years ago, when there was no prediction of a weather calamity, and within a few hours of the front hitting Northern VA, everything was iced over and the interstates were shut down. The silver lining to all that was that the execrable Tim Caine was stuck in his car on I-95 for like 36 hours. trying to get to DC. I am prepared to bear any burden if it means we experience such beneficence as that
Except temps typically forecast on the high side, SW Iowa weather forecasts were generally spot on. They were very good with dangerous winds. Now in NE Florida, I follow the advice of the golf league and step outside before leaving. We also bought a weather station. If they can't do it, we'll do it ourselves.
Formerly living in the Washington, DC area, a notoriously tough weather call (the Mid-Atlantic), I'm well used to the Weather Porn we get. As always, the Instapundit Advice is measured and useful (I've never regretted my Honeywell whole-house generator), even when the Weather Porn is correct (we exceeded our snowfall estimate for this storm). As to the politics; we're in Crazy Time.
Nobody ever sued a prognosticator for predicting a doom that didn’t materialize. But we do sue or otherwise punish a prognosticator (like a weatherman) who fails to predict an actual catastrophic event. So they’re motivated to over warn.
Given that pretty much all the climate alarmist predictions of the last 50 years have failed, I’m going to say the prediction model in your example is not a good analogy for those used by the climatistas.
So much of what you say about weather forecasts is true. I live on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The bay has a major influence on what happens: Baltimore and Washington, DC reports are not predictive of what happens when fronts hit the bay. I watched the snow/sleet/rain line revised several times over the past 4 days. And the timing was off by about 12 hours. We got what was somewhat predicted, minus about 30% of intensity.
Climatology is indeed an inexact science, even with the introduction of satellites and radar. The best it has given us is warning of coming storms, which is good so we can prepare. And certainly the technology has been especially useful for potential tornadoes.
I could go on about the reliability of long term climate models (scams), but that would be foolhardy.
As I predicted here on the VA peninsula, an inch (to be generous) of snow followed by cold rain. The road was good enough to take the terrorists to the park this morning.
I'm a tad farther north from you on the Eastern Shore. (Talbot County). Four inches of snow (started around 4 am), followed by sleet, followed (now) by rain freezing on tree branches. If the temps stay really low, there will be a lot of icy roads.
Ok, predicting weather is chaotic, but we totally know, within hundredths of a degree, what “average global temperature” was a thousand years ago and what it will be in a century. It’s The Science! ™
I get your point, and even largely agree with it. But there’s nothing at all contradictory about those two statements as such. We are completely unable to predict whether a given atom of fissile material will decay in a year, but we can predict to a very high accuracy how many of them in a ton will.
Forecasters have an incentive to err on the side of predicting doom. People don’t complain nearly as much about a predicted storm that fizzles as they would about a bad storm that blindsides them.
But—I was able to get a good price on a new generator after this last hurricane season. After another dire forecast, we got zero hurricanes hitting the mainland, and the stores were dumping their stock by late fall.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. I've not been caught out- yet. The day is young, and big snowstorm starting here in central VT. I have my Bobcat if we have to dig out.
As the Coast Guard motto says “Always Prepared” - at least for those things that common sense tells us like storms in winter and highway traffic.
Its called January! Sometime in July we'll read about Heat Waves!
Glen, you wouldn't have seen me there.... because after the 2021 TX deepfreeze, I bought a generator and got my house wired up to support it. A lot of people will get stuff like that.... and then they have it.
I have the same Generac generator. I had it installed because we were taking care of a 92 yr old mother in law with an O2 machine and other plug in medical equipment.That meant moving her during a blackout would be near impossible.
We had periodic blackouts even though we live minutes from the 5th largest city in the US. It's an old suburb with lots of old trees that battle with electric lines whenever the weather gets even moderately bad. The situation has improved somewhat because the electric company has been replacing all the poles and gas lines around here for the last 2 years. Just when you think they're done another trench and detour appear. But its all good. The pole work should make our service more reliable.
The generator and the electrician who installed it have been good to us. I wound up using the electrician father and son crew to rewire the old half of my house. It's all about trust.
They do the yearly maintenance. When I checked the oil level the other day it was full and clear.
In July we had a 36 hour power outage. My neighbor had just come from grocery shopping and had a lot of refrigerated stuff that would have gone bad; but we had her put it all in my mother laws refrigerator that we sadly no longer use after she died last year.
I ran an extension cord to my other neighbor's house on the other side of me 40 ft away to keep his refrigerator on. The generator had no problem running my two AC units and 3 refrigerators. The only negative thing I experienced was guilt.
It is noisy but I guess there's nothing they can do about that. I do wonder why they can silence the car in my driveway near perfectly but the generator sounds like the equipment they use to dig up my street. The company that puts a better muffler on one of these will take over the market.
Glenn,
I would not want to be the only home with electricity, at least not noticeably so.
Try to keep a low-vis footprint during those times.
The audible generator noise may be a giveaway, but lights would be visible much further away.
The opposite is no fun either. The power went out here during Ian. My husband keeps up with the generator and had it checked again in addition to normal maintenance in advance of the storm. So, the generator kicks on, immediately goes out, and we get to sit in the dark in our cozy little court listening to all the neighbor's generators rumbling away. The gas range along with an electric igniter came in handy.
I just came back in from clearing off our cars and the driveway. I'm in the Cincinnati, OH area--not the City of Cincinnati itself, it's only 20% of the land area of Hamilton County. I'm in one of the suburban townships north of the City. But we've had 8-10" of snow so far. It should be over soon. Tomorrow will be a high of 8 degrees--I wanted to do most of the digging out today, because it will be so much colder tomorrow. At least I'm retired, and don't have to go anywhere today or tomorrow. I'm just hoping we don't get any more of that -25 stuff we had here in the late '70s and early '80s. I lived through the Blizzard of '78, where in Cincinnati we got 1/4" of ice, then nearly a foot of snow, and then the temp dropped to -25. The region was shut down for 3 days. But I was in my late 20s then--I'm going to hit 76 next month. So it's a bit harder.
I am no fan of Mandami, but I saw an interesting exchange on X, who apparently monogamy tweeted out that residents should be aware they were in for 3 to 16 inches of snow. One comment was along the lines of sarcastic thanks for that information. I'm sorry to say my initial reaction was to consider piling on, until I realized that the estimates were probably about as good as the science would justify. Too many politicians have engaged in "hurricane hype" so I want to praise Mandami for not following that path. I doubt I'll often get a chance to praise him so let me not pass up this chance.
I am reminded of the inverse four years ago, when there was no prediction of a weather calamity, and within a few hours of the front hitting Northern VA, everything was iced over and the interstates were shut down. The silver lining to all that was that the execrable Tim Caine was stuck in his car on I-95 for like 36 hours. trying to get to DC. I am prepared to bear any burden if it means we experience such beneficence as that
Except temps typically forecast on the high side, SW Iowa weather forecasts were generally spot on. They were very good with dangerous winds. Now in NE Florida, I follow the advice of the golf league and step outside before leaving. We also bought a weather station. If they can't do it, we'll do it ourselves.
Formerly living in the Washington, DC area, a notoriously tough weather call (the Mid-Atlantic), I'm well used to the Weather Porn we get. As always, the Instapundit Advice is measured and useful (I've never regretted my Honeywell whole-house generator), even when the Weather Porn is correct (we exceeded our snowfall estimate for this storm). As to the politics; we're in Crazy Time.
Nobody ever sued a prognosticator for predicting a doom that didn’t materialize. But we do sue or otherwise punish a prognosticator (like a weatherman) who fails to predict an actual catastrophic event. So they’re motivated to over warn.
Given that pretty much all the climate alarmist predictions of the last 50 years have failed, I’m going to say the prediction model in your example is not a good analogy for those used by the climatistas.
So much of what you say about weather forecasts is true. I live on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The bay has a major influence on what happens: Baltimore and Washington, DC reports are not predictive of what happens when fronts hit the bay. I watched the snow/sleet/rain line revised several times over the past 4 days. And the timing was off by about 12 hours. We got what was somewhat predicted, minus about 30% of intensity.
Climatology is indeed an inexact science, even with the introduction of satellites and radar. The best it has given us is warning of coming storms, which is good so we can prepare. And certainly the technology has been especially useful for potential tornadoes.
I could go on about the reliability of long term climate models (scams), but that would be foolhardy.
As I predicted here on the VA peninsula, an inch (to be generous) of snow followed by cold rain. The road was good enough to take the terrorists to the park this morning.
I'm a tad farther north from you on the Eastern Shore. (Talbot County). Four inches of snow (started around 4 am), followed by sleet, followed (now) by rain freezing on tree branches. If the temps stay really low, there will be a lot of icy roads.